Bedtime Stories and Beginnings
by theparaph
Summary: Formerly 'Bedtime Stories'. Now a collection of young Thor and Loki centric drabbles.
1. Bedtime Stories

It's a perfect day, the kind of day that the mind recalls through the rose tinted haze of memories passed, when conjuring recollections of summer. The air lies still, sweet with the perfume of newly blossoming fruit trees and that strange, undefinable scent that is light and warmth. It is summer personified. The kind of day, when even the most disheartened of cynics hear the welcoming call of nature and stretch in whispering meadows and rejoice at the act of living.

It's that kind of day, when all things seem possible.

Perhaps _that _is why the two little boys run so long and tirelessly, far beyond the palace walls- and into the dark woods where even battle hardened warriors tread with caution, wary of the unknown. Perhaps that is why the elder, normally so intent to lead, is so magnanimous this day; content to follow the younger's wondering path, under dark canopies and over moss heavy ground, where sharp eyed bird squawk with reproach at their passing.

They are deep in the wood's shadowy heart when their harried nurse finally catches them up and pulls them, shame faced and whining, back into the land of light and safety- away from the gazes of the old, evil things that lurk concealed and waiting beneath the trees.

She could scold them, could reprimand them for their reckless flight. But she has seen the passage of many seasons, this woman; has chased the patter of countless tiny feet. She is wise to children's ways. Even when they are seemingly so un-childlike, as with this younger boy- little Loki, youngest son of Odin's house. Little Loki with his sharp tongue and too knowing eyes, who steals spell books from his father's library and tears the wings from bees for the sheer delight of seeing what they will do.

So she takes their small hands in her's and guides them back home, tongue locked silent behind teeth and lips that are pressed thin in anger.

They will learn their lesson, both of them. She must simply wait. So she waits- waits until the stage is set. Waits until darkness overtakes the glittering palace and the windows have been shuttered against the chill, damp air that has come in the day's wake and shadows dance across the floor in the hearth fire's light.

"Tell us a story," golden young Thor demands then, as she knew he would, his voice an unsure, infantile imitation of his king-father's.

Oh yes, now is the moment and she presses her advantage with the timing of a demagogue.

Every night she spins these children a different tale. Legends of brave warriors and beautiful maidens, of victorious battles that they will replay in their dreaming minds, taking for themselves the place of the hero. _But_, not this night. This night is a night for lessons that cannot be absorbed in the joyous light of day. Lessons for little boys who lead their brothers into peril and those who witlessly follow, never imagining that danger and death are waiting just out of sight.

Tonight, she draws her skirts together about her legs and perching at the corner of their bed, spins a different kind of tale.

"What to tell?" she wonders aloud, pretending to consider the question, as the boys watch expectantly from under their furs. "Two little princes, so keen for adventure, what I wonder would be of interest? A tale of dragons, perhaps? Of trolls? Of the frost giants with their blood red eyes?"

"Frost giants!" The elder prince scoffs. "Witless, gutless creatures."

But the younger doesn't share his sibling's boldness and ah , he chooses for her, for she cannot miss how he presses to his bother's side and draws the linens higher to hide himself.

"They are not so frightening," Thor thunders on, with the surety of one who has never know battle or death. "When I am grown, I will destroy every last one of them. Vile monster they are."

"You would not think them so easily dismissed were you to meet one," the nurse replies, smoothing a palm over her skirts and voice still light with the nonchalance of the story teller she begins to weave them her tale- stories of little boys who wander too far and too carelessly and of the blue skinned monsters who lurk in darkness to snatch them.

These monsters do not simply kill their hapless prey, she tells them. _No_, nothing so merciful as that. For monsters they truly are. Monsters, who clave open breasts and rip out still beating hearts to feast upon.

And when her story is at its end, she straitens the bed things and wishes them sweet dreams, sure that their imaginations will teach them a lesson she cannot. Yes, she knows children's hearts. And dream they do, especially the little trickster, who thrashes and whines all the long night, haunted by clawed blue hands that reach for him, to tear the rosy pink flesh from his bones and of eyes so dark and red that they might be blood congealed into two matching orbs. Eyes that he knows the shape and make of with a certainty he shouldn't rightly possess.


	2. The Threads of Fate

The moment Frigga sees him, she knows. Knows that something has changed, that something has shifted and fallen into place.

She rises from her seat on the high throne and her husband, King, _All-fathe_r; he who certain in all things, who does nothing without reason, regards her from the lowest step with bewilderment in his one remaining eye and she knows. S_omething has changed. _

"I knew not what to do." He makes no move to embrace her, to fling his arms about her as she's imagined him doing so many times since that first day he left to shed blood in distant lands. Instead he pulls a tiny bundle from the sheltering crook of his arm and offers it up to her gaze, cautious as a little boy cradling a foundling bird. "I could not leave it."

_A baby. _She spies it's fingers peeking out from the fabric's dark bulk, tiny and pale as moonlight. She goes to him, limbs moving as if of their own free will and reaches out to take it.

"Frigga," her husbands says, voice warning and she pauses, hands grasping empty air. "Frigga," he says again, "it is Jotun."

_Jotun._ Oldest and most feared of all their people's enemies. _Oh Valhalla_, she thinks to herself as she slips her hands under the bundle and gathers it to her; _what strange patterns of destiny the Norns are want to weave._ In her arms, the baby sleeps deeply, dark lashes heavy on its chubby cheeks. _So small, _even for an Æsir child.

"A runt," her husband answers, reading her wondering gaze. "I think that is why they left it."

_"What?"_

"In the temple."

"How could they do something so monstrous?"

"Their's is a harsh land," he says, words little more than a tired sigh. "They probably thought they were doing it a kindness, not letting it linger."

"How awful." Cooing soft nonsense to it, she pulls the baby close to her chest. _Tiny life_, she thinks, _tiny bones,_ abandoned so carelessly to suffering and death and yes, she can feel it still, those cloying threads of fate. Can feel them tying her heart to this unwanted child's.

"I cast a spell to make it appear Æsir," her husband says, "and another to hide it from the men's eyes on the journey home. Had they seen it, had they suspect what it was, they would have wished it killed. But, my love," he hesitates, something she has rarely known him to do in their many ages together, "it had the royal markings. The lines of inheritances. It is Laufey's."

_ Laufey's child_...

Impossible and yet, certainty weighs heavy on heart. "_No."_

"No?" her husband stares at her, confusion and surprise wrought on his weary face.

"Not Laufey's. _Ours. He_ will be our son." Gently she takes takes one of the baby's hands in her's and raising it, presses a kiss to the tiny fingers_._ "He will be mine. "


End file.
